Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex and Death is a non fiction book by Jenny Kleeman, which examines the technologies than this wiki knows as Sex Bot, Artificial Meat, Uterine Replicator and We Will Have Euthanasia in the Future. The author meets some of the men developing and promoting these technologies, estimates how far away they are from the mass market, and gives her thoughts on the likely social impact. It is not a very cheerful book.
Tropes in this book:
- Artificial Meat: The "vegan meat" of the title is cell cultures grown in vats, and is an intensely artificial product likely to be manufactured by Mega Corps. Any peasant can have real meat by raising a pig in their back yard, or people who don't want death for dinner could just, you know, eat plants.
- Central Theme:
- Using technology to solve social problems does nothing to solve the original problem, and can create new problems.
- Technologies that are being developed by men are likely to disproportionately affect women.
- He-Man Woman Hater: They make a prominent showing in the chapter about Uterine Replicators. Have your own kids without having to deal with evil castrating women? Sweet!
- Just a Machine: The publicity man for a start-up company making a Sex Bot considers this to be an advantage: misogynists can beat up their sex bot instead of beating up their wives and girlfriends "'they can be angry at this, and beat this, and that should be fine –’ he throws open his arms – ‘because it will not feel a thing, we promise!’." The author thinks it more likely that beating up mechanical women will mentally normalise beating up real women.
- Sex Bot: The author decides that the ultimate goal of the sex bot promoters isn't fancy masturbation toys, but slaves. A woman (or near equivalent) who obeys her owner's orders, does household chores, and is also sexually available.
- Shout-Out:
- After hearing how Exit and other British pro-euthanasia groups Do Not Get On, the author says "It sounds like the Judean People’s Front."
- Philip Nitschke, founder of Exit, says that he was inspired by the suicide scene in Soylent Green.
- Troll: When viewing misogynistic groups on Reddit, Kleeman notes that it can be hard to tell the difference between people who post extreme content because they really mean it, and people who know that that's the sort of material that gets upvoted. She also talks to a man who claims that his goal is "radicalise other men into giving up on women, so that there will be more women for him."
- Uterine Replicator: The author has very mixed feelings on this one.
- On the one hand: she had a miscarriage at nineteen weeks. Fully developed artificial wombs might have saved her baby, and would be much better for premature babies than current incubators. They would also be great for people who can't bear their own babies (e.g. gay couples, transgender people).
- On the other hand, the group "people who can't bear their own babies" includes men who hate women, and being able to pluck the baby out at any time and stick it in a bag will not discourage the many people who already want to monitor and interfere with pregnancy.
- Vapour Ware:
- The "Roxxxy" Sex Bot. The creator shows a crude prototype at a porn industry trade fair and has a web site declaring imminent availability, but is somehow always too busy to speak to the author.
- Exit continually announce new home suicide equipment, but nearly all of it is only a prototype, or requires chemicals or equipment or technical know-how that desperate people are unlikely to have.
- We Will Have Euthanasia in the Future: The Book concentrates on Philip Nitschke and his group Exit International, which promotes equipment for home death.
